The Darkest Room

by Johan Theorin

  “By Offermossen on the eastern road,” said Tilda. “I’m stuck.”

  “Understood, 1217…Do you need help?” Majner actually sounded as if he cared as he went on: “We’ll send somebody out, but it’s going to take a while. There’s a truck jammed across the road on the hill by the castle ruins, so all our cars are down there right now.”

  “And the snowplows?”

  “They’re only working on the main roads… the drifts keep on coming back.”

  “Understood. It’s the same here.”

  “But you’re okay for a while, 1217?”

  Tilda hesitated. She didn’t want to mention the fact that Martin was with her.

  “I haven’t got any coffee, but it’ll be fine,” she said. “If it gets colder, I’ll just make my way to the nearest house.”

  “Understood, 1217, I’ll make a note of that,” said Majner. “Good luck, Tilda. Over and out.”

  Tilda replaced the radio microphone and stayed where she was behind the wheel. She couldn’t decide what to do and looked in the rearview mirror, but a thick blanket of snow had already covered the rear windshield.

  In the end she picked up her cell phone and called a number in Marnäs. She got an answer after three rings, but the wind was howling so loudly outside the car that she couldn’t make out the words. She raised her voice.

  “Gerlof?”

  “Speaking.” His voice sounded quiet and distant.

  “It’s Tilda!” she shouted.

  There was a scraping noise in her ear. The reception was dire out here, but she heard his question:

  “Surely you’re not out driving in the blizzard?”

  “Yes, I’m in the car… on the coast road. Near Eel Point.”

  Gerlof said something inaudible.

  “What?” Tilda yelled into her cell phone.

  “I said that’s not so good.”

  “No…”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine. I’ve just-”

  “But do you really feel fine, Tilda?” Gerlof interrupted her, speaking more loudly. “In your heart and soul, I mean?”

  “In what? What did you say?”

  “Well, I’m just wondering if you might be unhappy… there was a letter in the bag along with the tape recorder.”

  “A letter?”

  But suddenly Tilda realized what Gerlof was talking about. She had thought about nothing but work and Henrik Jansson over the past few days, and had completely forgotten her private life. Now it all came back.

  “That letter was not addressed to you, Gerlof,” she said.

  “No, but…” His voice disappeared in a hiss of static, then came back: “… wasn’t sealed.”

  “Right,” she said. “So you read it?”

  “I read the first few sentences… and then I read a little bit at the end.”

  Tilda closed her eyes. She was too tired and anxious to be angry with Gerlof for rummaging in her bag.

  “You can tear it up,” was all she said.

  “You want me to destroy it?”

  “Yes. Throw it away.”

  “Okay, I will,” said Gerlof. “But are you feeling okay?”

  “I feel the way I deserve to feel.”

  Gerlof said something quietly, but she couldn’t make it out.

  Tilda wanted to tell him everything, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him that Martin’s wife had gotten pregnant while he was still seeing Tilda. She had just been happy and contented that Martin was with her-even on the night when Karin’s pains started. At midnight he had gone off to the hospital, full of excuses for missing the birth of his son.

  Tilda sighed and said, “I should have stopped it long ago.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Gerlof. “But you’ve stopped it now, I presume.”

  She looked in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes.”

  Then she looked out through the windshield. The snow had continued to rise, and she could hardly see out now. The car was turning into a snowdrift.

  “I think I’d better get out of here,” she said to Gerlof.

  “Can you drive through the snow?”

  “No… the car’s stuck.”

  “Then you need to get to Eel Point,” said Gerlof. “But be careful of your eyes as you’re walking… the blizzard blows up sand and earth along with the snow.”

  “Okay.”

  “And never, ever sit down to rest, Tilda, no matter how tired you are.”

  “No, of course not. Talk to you soon,” said Tilda, switching off the cell phone.

  Then she breathed in the warm air inside the car one last time, opened the door, and stepped out into the snow.

  The wind pressed itself against her, screamed in her ears, and pulled and tore at her. She locked the car and started to move along the road, as laboriously as a diver wearing lead boots on the seabed.

  Martin wound down the window as she reached his car. He blinked in the wind and raised his voice: “Is someone coming?”

  She shook her head and shouted back, “We can’t stay here!”

  “What?”

  Tilda pointed eastward. “There’s a house down there!”

  He nodded and wound up the window. A few seconds later he got out of the car, locked it, and followed Tilda.

  She walked through the swirling powdery snow blowing across the blacktop. She continued on down into the ditch and climbed over a stone wall.

  Tilda led the way toward Eel Point, with Martin a few steps behind her. Progress was slow. Every time she looked up into the wind, it was like being lashed with ice-cold birch twigs. She had to walk carefully, almost crouching to avoid being pushed over.

  Tilda was wearing only a pair of low boots on her feet, but wished she had been wearing skis. Or snowshoes.

  Eventually she turned away from the wind and stretched her arms out to the dark figure behind her.

  “Come on!” she shouted.

  Martin had already begun to shiver and shake in the cold. He was dressed in a thin leather jacket, and had nothing on his head.

  The inadequate clothes were his own fault, but she reached out her hand anyway.

  He took it without a word. They clung together and carried on toward the house at Eel Point.

  31

  Henrik Jansson was fighting his way through the blinding snow. He tucked his head down toward his chest in the roaring wind, and had only the vaguest idea of where he was.

  He guessed that he had reached the meadows by the shore to the south of the lighthouses at Eel Point, but he couldn’t see them. The snow scratched at his eyes.

  Idiot. He should have stayed inside. He had always stayed indoors when the blizzard came.

  One January weekend when he was seven years old and staying in his grandparents’ cottage, he had had a nightmare: a pride of roaring lions had been stalking around in his room during the night.

  When he woke up in the morning, the lions were gone. Everything was silent in the house, but when he got up and looked out, the ground between the buildings was sparkling white.

  “There was a blizzard overnight,” his grandfather Algot had explained.

  The undulating snow was almost as high as the window ledges-Henrik couldn’t open the front door.

  “How can you tell, Grandfather… that it’s a blizzard?”

  “You don’t know when the blizzard is coming,” Algot had said. “But you know when it arrives.”

  And Henrik knew, there on the Baltic shore. This was the blizzard. The gales before it started had been nothing more than a premonition.

  Algot’s scythe swung in the wind, weighing him down. He was forced to drop it in the snow, but hung onto the ax. He took three steps over the solid, frozen ground, hunkered down, and rested. Then three more steps.

  After a while he had to rest after every other step.

  The thin ice cover out at sea was smashed to pieces by the strengthening waves. Henrik heard the long drawn-out rumbling, but could no longer see the s
ea-he could see nothing in any direction.

  The pains in his stomach had abated. It might have been the effects of the icy wind, reducing the bleeding, but at the same time he felt as if his entire body were slowly becoming numb.

  His consciousness began to drift away-sometimes it was so far away that it felt as if he were hovering next to his body.

  Henrik thought about Katrine, the woman who had drowned at Eel Point. He had enjoyed sanding and replacing the floors with her. She had been small and blonde, just like Camilla.

  Camilla.

  He remembered her warmth as they lay in bed. But that thought quickly disappeared in the wind.

  It was too late to turn back toward to the boathouses at Enslunda, and he didn’t even know where they were any longer. And where were the fucking lighthouses? Henrik peered up into the wind and caught a brief glimpse of a faint

  flashing light in the distance-so he was heading in the right direction.

  Breathe in, move forward, breathe out.

  Then came a hard shove from the direction of the sea that stopped him in the middle of a step. The wind had increased in strength yet again, although Henrik had thought that was impossible.

  He sank to his knees. At the same time he dropped the ax in the snow, but managed to pick it up again with enormous difficulty, and tucked the shaft inside his jacket. The ax was meant for the Serelius brothers, and he mustn’t lose it.

  He crept north, or at least in the direction he thought was north. There was nothing else he could do; if he stopped to rest in the storm, he would soon freeze to death.

  Thieves deserve to be thrashed, he could hear his grandfather saying. They’re good for nothing but fertilizer and fish food.

  Henrik shook his head.

  No, his grandfather had always been able to trust him. The only people he had ever deceived were his teachers, some of his friends, his parents, and John, his boss at the flooring company. And the people who owned the houses. And Camilla, of course; he had sometimes lied to her when they were together, and in the end she had grown tired of him.

  A screwdriver in the stomach, perhaps that was what he deserved.

  Suddenly someone was clawing at him. Henrik panicked before he realized it was just long leaves from the reeds, whirling around in the wind.

  He stopped, closed his eyes, and curled up in the icy blast. If he just relaxed and stopped struggling, he would soon go completely numb, in his stomach and right through the rest of his body.

  Was death warm or cold? Or somewhere in between?

  Somewhere in his head were the Serelius brothers with their broad smiles. That got him moving again.

  32

  Joakim stood in the barn listening to the wind roaring over the huge roof. He could feel its power through the beams and the sheets of asbestos, but at least he was out of its reach.

  He had climbed the ladder a few minutes earlier and was back in the room behind the hayloft.

  Everything was silent here. The angular roof high above gave him the feeling of having stepped into a church.

  The batteries in his flashlight were almost done, but he could still make out the old church benches in the darkness. And all the old objects lying on them.

  This was the prayer room for those who had died at Eel Point; this was where they gathered every Christmas.

  Joakim was sure of it. Would they come tonight or tomorrow? It didn’t matter, he would stay here and wait for Katrine.

  Slowly Joakim moved forward along the narrow aisle between the benches, looking at the possessions of the dead.

  He stopped by the front bench and shone the flashlight on the denim jacket lying there, neatly folded.

  He had left it exactly where he found it-he had hardly dared touch it that night. He had taken the book Mirja Rambe had written into his bedroom and started to read it, but he didn’t want Ethel’s jacket in the house. He was afraid that Livia would start dreaming about her aunt again.

  Joakim reached out and felt at the worn fabric, as if touching it could provide answers to all his questions.

  When he got hold of one sleeve, something rustled and fell on the floor.

  It was a small piece of paper.

  He bent down and picked it up, and saw a single sentence written in ink. In the faint beam of the flashlight Joakim read the words, which had been pressed hard into the paper:

  MAKE SURE

  THAT JUNKIE WHORE

  DISAPPEARS

  Slowly he moved backwards, the note in his hand.

  That junkie whore.

  Joakim read the six words on the note several times, and realized this was not a message to Ethel. This had been written to him and Katrine.

  Make sure that junkie whore disappears.

  But he had never seen it before.

  The paper had not been damaged by damp and the ink was black and clear, so the note couldn’t have been in the pocket the night Ethel fell in the water.

  The note had been placed there later, he realized. Presumably by Katrine, after she had got hold of the jacket from Joakim’s mother.

  Joakim thought back to the nights when Ethel would stand and scream out in the street at the Apple House. Sometimes

  he had seen the neighbors’ curtains being pulled aside. Pale, terrified faces had peered out at Ethel.

  A note with an exhortation from the neighbors. Katrine must have found it in the mailbox one day when she was home alone, and she had read it and realized that this couldn’t go on. The neighbors had had enough of the yelling, night after night.

  Everybody had had enough of Ethel. Something had to be done.

  Joakim was very tired now, and sank down on the bench next to Ethel’s jacket. He kept on staring at the note in his hand, until he heard a faint scraping noise through the wind.

  It was coming from the opening in the floor behind him.

  Someone was inside the barn.

  When the northern lighthouse is lit, someone is going to die at Eel Point. I have heard that story, but that evening when I got home from Borgholm and saw the white light from the northern tower, I didn’t think about it. I was too shocked at seeing Ragnar Davidsson carrying Torun’s paintings down to the water, without taking the slightest notice of my cries.

  He had dropped a few rolled-up canvases in the snow, and I tried to gather them up, but they scudded away in the wind. All I had in my arms were two paintings when I got back to the house.

  – MIRJA RAMBE

  WINTER 1962

  With the wind at my back, I race into the outbuilding’s porch and on into the middle room, despite the fact that I know what I will see there.

  Empty white walls.

  Almost all of Torun’s blizzard paintings have gone from the storeroom-there are just a few rolled up on the floor, but there are several piles of fishing nets.

  The door to our end of the house is closed, but I know that Torun is sitting in there. I can’t go in to her, can’t tell her what has happened, so I sink down onto the floor.

  Over on the table are a half-full glass and a bottle. They weren’t there before.

  I quickly go over to them, stick my nose in the glass, and sniff at the clear liquid. It’s schnapps-presumably Davidsson’s ration to keep him warm.

  Here and there around the house are similar bottles with different contents, and when I think about them I know what I am going to do.

  There is no sign of Davidsson as I hurry across the inner

  courtyard, open the barn door, and slip into the darkness. I can find my way around in there among the shadows without a light, and go further inside to the garbage and the hidden treasures. In a corner stands a special metal container-a container on which someone has drawn a black cross. I take it back to the outbuilding with me.

  In the storeroom I empty out most of Davidsson’s schnapps onto one of his piles of nets that stinks of tar, then top it up with the same amount of the equally clear and almost odor-free liquid from the can.

  There is a wooden c
upboard in the corner; I hide the can in there.

  Then I sit down on the floor again and wait.

  Five or ten minutes later there is a rattling at the door. The howling of the wind increases in volume, before the noise is cut off with a bang.

  A pair of heavy boots step into the porch and stamp up and down to shake off the snow; I recognize the smell of sweat and tar.

  Ragnar Davidsson comes into the room and looks at me.

  “So where have you been?” he asks. “You just took off this morning.”

  I don’t reply. The only thing I can think of is what I’m going to say to Torun about the paintings. She can’t find out what has happened.

  “With some guy, of course,” says Davidsson, answering his own question.

  He walks slowly around me on the cement floor, and I give him one last chance. I raise my hand and point toward the shore.

  “We have to go and fetch the paintings.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is. You have to help me.”

  He shakes his head and walks over to the table. “They’re

  already gone… they’re on their way to Gotland. The wind and the waves took them.”

  He fills up the glass and raises it to his lips.

  I could warn him, but I say nothing. I simply watch as he drinks-three good gulps that almost empty the glass.

  Then he puts it down on the table, smacks his lips and says, “Right, little Mirja… so what do you fancy doing now?”

  33

  Henrik woke up to find his dead grandfather standing over him like a shadow in the whirling powdery snow. Algot leaned forward and raised his boot-clad foot.

  Move yourself! Do you want to die?

  He felt hard blows striking his legs and feet, over and over again.

  Get up! Thieving bastard!

  Henrik slowly lifted his head, wiped the snow out of his eyes, and screwed his eyes up as he peered into the wind. His grandfather’s ghost was gone, but in the distance he could see a searchlight sweeping silently across the night sky. The blood-red glow made the veils of snow above him sparkle.

  A little further away he thought he could see another light. A steady white light.